Infosys expands TK Elevator mandate; Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital makes first India investment

Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank has proposed allowing integration between India’s Unified Payments Interface and credit cards, TechCrunch reports. “UPI facilitates transactions by linking savings or current accounts through users’ debit cards. It is now proposed to allow linking of credit cards on the UPI platform,” Shaktikanta Das, the governor of Reserve Bank of India said at a briefing, according to TechCrunch. To begin with, the RuPay credit cards will be linked to UPI, he said. RuPay is India’s homegrown card network, which is promoted by the National Payments Corporation of India, a special body of RBI that also oversees UPI payments. Infosys has won a contract from TK Elevator that expands the Indian IT services giant’s engagement with the German maker of lifts, the company said in a press release yesterday. The seven-year contract involves providing AI-powered IT helpdesk services, digital workplace management, and network services, using automation solutions from Infosys Cobalt, the company’s suite of cloud technologies, products and services. NASA is putting together an independent team of researchers to study sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, the updated term now used to refer to UFOs, the American space agency said in a blog post yesterday. NASA says it plans to study these sightings from a scientific perspective but also stressed that “there is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin,” The Verge reports. The study team is to be led by astrophysicist David Spergel under NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. It will attempt to identify what data is out there on UAPs and figure out how to best capture data on UAPs in the future. NASA noted that the limitations in sightings make it hard to come to logical conclusions about where UAPs come from. The study will be open and unclassified, according to Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for science at NASA, according to The Verge. SolarSquare, a Mumbai-based startup, has raised $4 million led by Google Capital, with participation from US investor Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital, Singapore based Symphony Asia and Nithin Kamath’s Rainmatter Foundation. The round also saw participation from Better Capital, Climate Angels and several angel investors. This investment mark’s the $1 billion Lowercarbon Capital’s first Indian investment, according to SolarSquare’s press release. SolarSquare was founded in 2015 by Neeraj Jain and Nikhil Nahar, and Shreya Mishra joined them as co-founder. The company, originally started as a B2B solar venture, is rapidly expanding its B2C operations, and the fresh funds will help SolarSquare to go faster in that direction. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds